Filipinos love movies. You better believe it. They love movies so much that famous actors are elected to be Mayors and Senators. They love movies so much that national policy and laws are based on them. Take the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Lucas Bersamin. He really loves action films. Particularly the "...Has Fallen" film series.
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| http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/960901/sc-justice-fears-movies-about-terrorism-could-become-reality |
“How can the republic survive if there was another kind of threat worse than rebellion or invasion,” a Supreme Court Associate Justice asked Tuesday as he noted that President Rodrigo Duterte’s martial law is already emasculated compared to that of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
“Like what, your honor?” asked former Commission on Elections (Comelec) Chairman Christian Monsod who was one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution.
“Drone can be operated as far as US attacking some abandoned place in Afghanistan. That is what I see in the internet,” Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin said.
Monsod said a drone, even a million drones cannot threaten the life and survival of the government.
“Oh I watched so many movies like White House has fallen, London has fallen. These are very terrifying realities that could happen in a few years’ time,” Bersamin said, adding that the framers crafted a constitution “that constricted the use of the ultimate power to actual invasion and actual rebellion.”
“What if these [movies] become a reality,” Bersamin asked.
“A thousand, a million drones cannot occupy a country,” Monsod said.
“Oh you are so confident,” Bersamin said to which Monsod responded: “I have not seen movies like that.”
Could the plot of movies like Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen ever become a reality? IN the first movie the White House is taken over by terrorists and in the second a coordinated terrorist attack in London kills five Western leaders causing mass panic. Anything is possible but those are not likely scenarios. They sure don't reflect the reality of controlled conflicts by the global elite pulling the strings behind the scenes. And yet the second extension of marital law for the year 2018 was upheld by this man based in part on his unfounded fears which are rooted in fiction.
Bersamin is not the only one who has been watching too many movies. So has Sen. Lacson. He recently filed a bill concerning the chain of succession in case of emergency.
Bersamin is not the only one who has been watching too many movies. So has Sen. Lacson. He recently filed a bill concerning the chain of succession in case of emergency.
If the President dies and then all of his constitutional successors are captured by terrorists, who will lead the country?
Legislation loosely based on a popular Netflix political thriller called the “Designated Survivor” have been filed in the Senate and the House of Representatives to deal with such a situation.
In the show, actor Kiefer Sutherland plays Housing and Urban Development Secretary Tom Kirkham, who is hidden away during the State of the Union. He was thrust into the US presidency when the Capitol building is bombed during the address, killing the president and everyone in it.
The Philippine proposal is called the Presidential Succession Act, referred to simply as the designated survivor bill.
Sen. Ping Lacson wrote the Senate version of the bill, while Quezon City Rep. Precious Hipolito introduced the House counterpart proposal.
Lacson told reporters on Thursday that his proposal was inspired by the Netflix series.
Again another situation that is not impossible but how likely is it that the President will die and all of his successors will then be immediately captured by terrorists? What does this scenario say about Lacson? Is he scared this will really happen? Does he believe that the very real threat of ISIS in the Philippines will get out of control? Duterte seems to think it will.
There is only one time when the government of a nation was nearly wiped out at once and that was in 2010.
The Smolensk air disaster occurred on 10 April 2010, when a Tupolev Tu-154 aircraft of the Polish Air Forcecrashed near the Russian city of Smolensk, killing all 96 people on board. Among the victims were the President of Poland Lech Kaczyński and his wife Maria, the former President of Poland in exile Ryszard Kaczorowski, the chief of the Polish General Staff and other senior Polish military officers, the president of the National Bank of Poland, Polish Government officials, 18 members of the Polish Parliament, senior members of the Polish clergy and relatives of victims of the Katyn massacre. The group was arriving from Warsaw to attend an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of the massacre, which took place not far from Smolensk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smolensk_air_disaster
This air crash was a real disaster so why not base a bill on that? Write a bill directing that when large contingents of government officials fly overseas they be split across more than one plane so that everyone does not die if an accident were to happen. Duterte's entourages are quite large. There is no need for taking such a risk.
The Metro Manila Film Festival is a film festival held at the end of December every year. December 25th to the first weekend of January. During this time no foreign films are played in any theatres throughout the country. This is kind of a weird situation and I know nothing like it. Think of all the great film festivals Cannes, Venice, Toronto, New York, Tribeca, Los Angeles these festivals are showcases for cinema from around the world and what happens at these festivals does not dictate what can and cannot be shown in the national theatres of he host country.
But the MMFF is not a film festival for global cinema. It is only for Filipino films. What is the point? To boost the local industry I suppose. Only when it comes to film do we truly live in a global society. Take Japan for instance. Japanese films are shown and beloved around the world and not just anime. At least two of the most important directors of all time, Kurosawa and Ozu, are Japanese. The point here is that no film festival in the world, as far as I know, excludes foreign films except the MMFF and now there is a drive to have this film festival held twice a year.
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| https://entertainment.inquirer.net/344304/no-foreign-movies-twice-a-year-as-mmda-exec-wants-mmff-held-that-often |
The proposal to stage Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) twice a year will make Filipino films more “profitable,” an official of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) said Wednesday (Sept. 4).
MMDA General Manager Jojo Garcia said the only time Filipino movies make money is when the festival is held every December during which theaters are forced to show only Filipino movies and no foreign films.
Garcia said other film festivals are having difficulty making money because of competition from foreign films. He did not talk about the quality of movies.
“But if we have a film festival that will not roll out foreign films? Who will benefit from it? Filipino films,” he added.
Amazing. Filipino films don't make money because of foreign competition so the solution is to force theatres to show only Filipino films twice a year! Maybe Filipino films are so bad no one wants to watch them. Maybe the Filipino film industry is comatose and out of ideas. Maybe? According to one director that is exactly the case.
This industry is on auto-pilot now. No wonder Cardo doesn’t die in Probinsyano. Until we’ve figured out how to woo the audience back, let’s just keep Cardo alive for now.
The industry is abuzz, don’t get me wrong. Everyone seems to be working. It’s hard to put together a crew these days. If they’re not doing movies, they’re into TV or some digital series somewhere. Everyone’s working. But the work seems to be just getting by. No game changers looming in the horizon. No high concept fresh ideas coming out. Rehash after rehash. Rehashed love triangles. Rehashed May-December affairs. Cliche children stories and old age stories. Cliche boy-girl commitment issue movies. Good thing we got over with finding-the-great-one-love-in-the-world stories.
Everyone’s into genre too. One-line premise genres . Everyone wants to discover a new genre or sub genre but there’s not much reimagining that goes into it. We mostly get fast and easy genre stories with old and told character arcs and plots.
We are all guilty.
This is not to say that everyone is not doing their best. That no one wants something fresh and sort of original. It’s the call of the times. It’s a calculated risk. Let’s try a different genre but let’s try the stories that sort of already worked. That’s the only thing we can afford. In this volatile industry where we don’t know if there’s an audience for any story we come up with or if it will ever see the light of day in cinemas, everyone is on desperate mode. Steady middling mode.
Keep on doing movies. Work is work. Let’s do it fast and loose. Write it for 3 days. Yes, that’s a record writing time and studios seem to love it too whether it’s a good script or not. It’s just about content. More more content. You want content? You say every story’s been done 20 years ago? Well, so long as it’s content then anything is good. Some dumb ass browser sitting somewhere will devour this tired story nonetheless. The logline says it all no matter how shitty it all comes out, says the all-knowing producer. We can sell the logline. Let’s hope when they see it there’s word-of-mouth.
Even our art-house has become stale. Stale. Art-house always explore the unknown whether in substance or in form. Our art-house no longer does that. They shock but it’s not groundbreaking. They gross out but it’s not visceral. They are contemplative but super boring. Art-house for the sake of art-house.
I can’t sit still. We can’t just ride the tide and wish we end up in a good place. We’re in a state of coma now. We’ve got to find a way to move our toes on our feet to get us out of it and change the course of cinema in this country.
https://www.facebook.com/erikmatti/posts/10156605389986446
"Even our art-house has become stale." The greatest Filipino filmmaker who resides in the art-house is Lav Diaz. His films have screened at major film festivals winning him multiple awards. But with runtimes between 4 and 9 hours his films are unwatchable. Not in one go anyway. The average cinema goer doesn't have time for that.
Filipinos are not unlike the rest of the world in their love for the movies. Everyone loves the movies. The list of actor politicians from around the world is rather long. But I don't know of any country that has proposed or passed legislation based on the plot of a film or who's national cinema is so unprofitable that citizens have to be forced to watch domestic made films.
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